Friday, July 08, 2011

Marketing is a game of inches

It's not good enough to say "we'll email our customers in the morning instead of the afternoon" or "Tuesday is the best day to send our newsletter." That's way too general.

What time, precisely, is the best time to send? What specific time Tuesday morning (local time for the recipient, not your time)? When are your customers specifically most receptive to your message?

Quick example:

I had been publishing new blog posts each weekday morning between 8:10 and 8:25 a.m. Pacific time. My assumption had been that I wanted to reach readers early, when they get into the office, and before they're consumed by the morning's priorities and fire drills.

This small change lifted my immediate readership (measured by views and clicks within the first 60 minutes) by 65-90 percent (with the range reflecting a multi-day test).

One more quick example:

At a past job, while testing dozens of variables to increase conversion rate on a two-page registration form, the single-largest variable we discovered to lift conversion was changing the background color from white to light blue.